Best See & Be Seen Places in London

Clare Smyth's three-Michelin-star Notting Hill flagship — modern British cooking at the peninsula's ceiling

Royal Hospital Road's three-Michelin-star founding flagship, held continuously since 2001

The 2023 conversion of the Old War Office on Whitehall — Mauro Colagreco's Michelin-starred Saison, a Guerlain spa, and the most ambitious new opening in the city.

Karam Sethi's Marylebone coastal-Indian — one Michelin star held since 2012

Notting Hill's Michelin-starred neighbourhood brasserie — wood-fired grill, retained star 2026

Claude and Lucy Bosi's Parisian-brasserie second site — the Marylebone room that opened where Daylesford Blandford Street used to sit

Mount Street seafood and the city's most consequential lunch crowd — the Mayfair set-piece.

The Brook Street Art Deco grande dame — afternoon tea in the Foyer, a Foyer Bar by Bryan O'Sullivan, and the most famous lobby in London.

Tomos Parry's Michelin-starred Beak Street wood-fired room — the Basque grill that Brat became Soho-confident in

Rainer Becker's original 2004 robatayaki — the Charlotte Street counter Roka grew from, with Shochu Lounge in the basement

A patinated 18th-century courtroom turned dining room — Clerkenwell's most photographed kitchen

The 1893 hotel bar that wrote the cocktail manual the rest of London still reads

UK's No.1 gastropub 2026 — the Soho Guinness pour and the dining room above it

Piccadilly's grand café — the Viennese-Parisian brasserie that runs from breakfast to supper

The Berkeley's pastry counter — Grolet's first London room, the trompe-l'œil fruits the audience has only seen on Instagram

St Martin's Court's 1890s seafood institution — Theatreland's pre-curtain Dover sole

Piccadilly's 1707 grocery — the food hall, the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, the hampers everyone takes home

Keith McNally's Russell Street brasserie — the SoHo Manhattan original transposed to Covent Garden, twelve years in.

Pierre Gagnaire's three-Michelin-star Mayfair drawing room — the most theatrical fine-dining address in W1.

Chet Sharma's one-Michelin-star Mayfair Indian — the JKS room that reframed regional Indian cooking in 2021.